STORY: The Legend Of World Book Day!

NOTE: This was original published on a different website. I’m posting it here so more people can enjoy it.

A/N: It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Hooray, huzzah, callooh, callay, oh frabjous day! It’s World Book Day, so I thought I would tell you about all of the traditions associated with this most hallowed of national days.

The Legend Of World Book Day!

by MiscellaneousSoup

Beginnings: Every celebration of World Book Day begins when Skively Wellington, an extremely pompous old man, prances down the street, hurtling books at everyone! He is usually dressed in a fancy suit, complete with a top hat, monocle, and cane. Basically, imagine a taller version of Rich Uncle Pennybags, otherwise known as that guy on the Monopoly game!

If you don’t like the book, please tell him that you don’t like it. Use the phrase “Sir, I am afraid that I do not desire this publication! Might I please exchange it?” He will continue to throw books at you, increasing in length and weight, until you find one you like! If he throws a thesaurus at you, it means that you don’t know the proper phrasing! If he throws a bar of soap at you, it means that he has extra bars of soap and he doesn’t know what to do with them.

How To Celebrate: To celebrate World Book Day, any person can write a book in the following three hundred and sixty-four days of the year! Then, bind up a book and make multiple copies. After that, dress up as a giant book, complete with the appropriate binding and ink. Tie yourself to a wheelbarrow, stocked with all of the copies of your novel. Then, get a friend to shove you down the highway before they get into their costume. As you plummet down the interstate, scream “HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY, EVERYONE!”

After that, you should get medical attention. By that, I don’t mean going to a hospital. No, that would be absolutely preposterous! You don’t get help from other people on World Book Day, you get help from books on World Book Day! Drag your injured person to the library and start reading every medical textbook they have. Once you are well-versed in that field, make like a physician and heal thyself!

Origins: This tradition began in jolly old prehistoric times where the dinosaurs would scribble down the best places to find food on pieces of leaves, then bind them together with tar. Coincidentally, this also began the tradition of restaurant menus. However, if you want to see the first human instance, then look no further! Here is the story of Brog.

Brog: Brog was a caveman, as well as a dolt. He would ruin everyone’s food and trample everyone’s living space. On no more than seventeen occasions, he nearly killed the entirety of the Neanderthal population! Yes, even the ones in a different location! One day, everyone got tired with Brog, so they decided to form a task force. The task force decided to create a manuscript to knock some sense into Brog. Unfortunately, beating him in the cranium didn’t work. One Neanderthal came up with the clever idea of forcing him to read and comprehend the manuscript. It didn’t work, he grunted and threw in the tar pit. After that, things started to change, but we don’t need to get into that now.

Modern Traditions: Bookworms around the world have come up with a definitive list of celebration tactics!

Hugging your local library.

Kissing your local library.

Marrying your local library.

Marrying two libraries together.

Marrying three or more libraries together.

Building a new library.

Find a factory that makes Kindles and Nooks and BURN IT TO THE GROUND!

Go find a person who has a Kindle or Nook. Slap them in the face, then kick them until they pass out. Call the police to get them arrested for crimes against paper-based materials.

Support independent bookstores and libraries! (This one is not a joke. I’m actually being serious, please do it. Amazon has been up to some shady things.)

Put on your best Skively Wellington cosplay!

Go to SkivelyCon, a convention for all things Skively Wellington! See the best cosplay and the best recreation of his birth! (He was born when the first library was created. He burst out of the reference desk with a halo-ish glow! Several people fainted, while others started bowing down to him on the spot.)

Make up your own traditions and send them to me at the WordPress blog, Miscellaneous Soup.